


Sins and Sleep

by pinstripedJackalope



Category: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Series - Mackenzi Lee
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Death, Nightmares, Sort Of, Survivor Guilt, not sure how to tag :'D
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-03 07:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21175328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: Monty has a nightmare and wakes with the image of blood on his hands.  Percy is there to soothe him.





	Sins and Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> There are a few fics featuring Monty with nightmares and I wanted to try it for myself! I haven't read the Lady's Guide yet so the number of years/months/weeks etc is completely random.

It’s been seven years, two months, four days, and some odd hours since my life was turned upside down. Seven years, two months, four days, and some odd hours since the fifth day after Versailles, and just after the chime of two AM I wake to the sensation of blood seeping through my breeches at the knees and my shirt at the elbows.

For a good thirty seconds I’m panicked. I’ve got my head on absolutely backwards and I’m convinced that I’m crouched in a puddle of blood. My hands are shaking as I throw myself backwards off my belly so forcefully that I nearly pitch off the end of the bed, tangling myself in the sheets. There’s a grunt at my side, Percy coming awake in response to my antics, and half of me is already apologizing for waking him while the other half is still so mired in the dream that I can hardly see anything but red, red, red.

It takes far too long to wake the rest of the way up, and by the time I do Percy has managed to light the candle at our bedside table. “What is it, what’s going on?” he asks, reaching for my face with sleepy limbs, concern etched into his face in the dim light.

The puddle flashes again before me, and this time I see a body, a head, a face. Twisted in a death mask, ugly and staring staring staring. The image does not leave. 

“Monty,” Percy prompts, so gentle. 

“I have blood on my hands,” I say, finally scraping together a response from god only knows where. The vestiges of the nightmare, perhaps. I stare down, owl-eyed, at the offending appendages. They are white and quivering in the near-darkness, looking nothing like the red-splattered images in my nightmares. 

And yet.

Percy is still several steps behind, bleary with sleep. “What blood, love?” he asks, as if he’s entertaining a wild fantasy, one he’s waiting to hear more about so he can talk me out from under it. He takes one of my hands and turns it over, running his dark fingers over my skin as if he can show me that there’s nothing there.

It doesn’t help. I still see it, still see everything, and everything I see is _wrong_. “The coachman,” I manage to croak. “The coachman, he—oh Lord, I—”

I don’t realize I’ve started crying until the first drops hit my hands, making me flinch where I sit. It comes on suddenly, like this, every once in a while. The tears. The guilt. The fear, and rage, and pain. Sometimes there’s an inciting incident—a blow from a thief-taker, the swirling sickness of belladonna—but sometimes, some nights, it comes from nowhere. And from nowhere I mean everywhere. Like it’s seeping into my pores, a sick miasma, the puss of unhealed wounds and infection hanging in the very air itself.

“I’ve blood on my hands,” I say again, this time through a choking sob, and I don’t know how it’s been so long since that day on the highway on our way to Marseilles, when my theft brought calamity down on us, and it’s only now that I’m feeling it all come down on me. Seven years, two months, four days and change…

…and all I have to show for my guilt is a nightmare and some tears.

Pathetic.

It’s too much, and I’m sobbing in earnest by this point, great gasping breaths that come back out in unstoppable cries. Percy has crawled round to my side and is attempting to hold me to his bare chest. He’s strong when he wants to be, soft when he wants to be, and right now he wants to be both. I can feel myself sinking, lower and lower against his skin, my hands trapped between his arm and his side as he clamps his arms around me tight tight tight. “Shhh…” he says into my mussed hair, stroking a rhythm up and down my back with one hand. “Shhh,” and “it’s okay,” and “I love you.”

“You shouldn’t,” I manage to get out through chattering teeth. I feel as if I’m shaking apart, all the little pins and nails holding my skeleton together giving out at once. My eyes are overflowing and there seems to be no end of the tears, like they’re drops from a vast ocean deep inside me. “The c-coachman, he had a family—he—”

“I know,” Percy says softly. 

And of course he does. He must know better than I do the pain I’ve wrought, because I never can seem to quite understand the consequences of my actions until far after they’ve come to pass. I went to the ends of the world to obtain a woman’s heart, not understanding all the while the fact that it would be taking the life of a living being. I was clueless, naive, and stubborn—the worst combination of traits. And the fact that I’ve just now realized that that journey took a man’s life, more than one man’s life, is… it’s…

Percy’s voice vibrates through me, calling my name. My good ear is on his chest, pressed right up against his lungs, and though I’m still shaking with sobs they’re quieter now, slowly tapering off into whimpers. I’m this close to being lost in grief but I hear my name again, rumbling through me and lifting me back up from the darkness. I come along without a fight because it’s _Percy_. Percy who is holding me, who is comforting me, who has been witness to every misdeed and mistake I’ve ever made and who still stands strong by my side. Percy, my other half, my better half, my love.

“I’ve something to say, and you’ll listen when I say it,” he’s saying now. I gulp air, shaking still, though I’m hardly making any noise now. He taps my shoulder with a gentle finger, making sure I’m paying attention. I am. “Okay. Here goes. You, Henry Montague, are a good man, and I’ll give you five reasons why.”

I huff a laugh that’s wetter than any laugh should really be, not feeling it in any place a laugh is meant to be felt. “Oh, this should be good. Do go on,” I say.

He ignores the stark self-loathing in my tone and says, confident, “One: you didn’t know you stole something so valuable that it would cost another man’s life.”

That hardly seems to matter, especially since we’re attempting to build a case to the point that I’m a good man. I begin to retort, meaning to rebut him.

He’s having none of it. “Hush. Two: you didn’t _mean_ to steal something so valuable that it would cost another man’s life.”

I’m still shaking, clutching at him with numb fingers, shaking my head a little against him. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow.

“Three: you never once levered lethal power over anyone, intentionally or not. Not even that damned duke, despite him threatening your life at every possible turn.”

“It may not have been by my hand, but I still caused a man to die—”

“It’s not the same, love. You weren’t instrumental in the decision-making process that lead to said death, and you certainly had no say in it. So four: a bad man does not feel guilt for bad things he’s done, but a good man has empathy for things he had no hand in. Good men feel bad about death and plague and pestilence, even if they’re not the cause of it. And five…”

Here he pauses, and I look up at him in the near-dark. His lips are pursed, his eyes fixed on something above my head, and my heart sinks. “You can’t think of another, can you?” I ask.

His expression melts into the softest smile I think I’ve ever seen, gaze flicking down to me. He brushes a thumb across my cheek, wiping away the trails of too many tears. “I can, darling. I can think of a hundred more. But I promised you five, so number five… would someone bad be able to bring joy and love to my life day after dreary day? Would someone bad _want_ to bring joy and love to my dreary life?”

“That makes me a sinner, according to the church,” I say. I’m calmer now, but I’m still clutching desperately tight to his bare chest as if he’ll suddenly have enough of me and get up to leave. I have my good ear pressed so close to his skin that his words are muffled. Still, I hear them all the same.

“You may be a sinner, Henry ‘Monty’ Montague, but you are no Duke of Bourbon. If you want to be a bad man you simply must try harder.”

His haughty tone, combined with the fact that he’s clearly trying not to laugh, finally breaks through the last bleak tendrils of the nightmare, like a beam of light through the darkness. I huff a breath against his skin, my lips curling into something of a smile despite myself. He rocks us, back and forth, a few times before he leans back to cradle my jaw in his hands. The look he gives me… I wish I could bottle it and drink it like pure spirits whenever he’s away. But I can’t, and for now I’ll have to deal with having the next best thing—Percy himself, pulling me back down to our pillows and fixing the sheets around me with a tenderness that makes my ribs hurt. 

As I fall back to sleep, wrapped up in Percy’s arms, I think: Percy is right about one thing. I may not have been the best man I could ever be, and I may have made more mistakes than I can ever truly atone for, but I do want to bring him joy, and love, and everything else he could ever desire. I want to lavish that joy and love on him for the rest of our lives. Loving Percy, out loud and unabashedly, is the greatest deed I’ll ever do—a deed to which God may object and result in my ejection from the pearly gates, at which point I suppose I’ll just fight God Himself because Percy, my dearest Percy, is worth that and more. 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! Cheers!


End file.
